Thursday, July 31, 2025
The American Wood Council (AWC) today unveiled its Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for U.S. Northern softwood lumber, marking the completion of the industry’s first regional EPD suite. This new declaration provides detailed, region-specific life cycle data on environmental impacts—such as carbon footprint, energy demand, and water usage—for softwood lumber sourced and manufactured in the Northern states.
Building on last year’s releases for the Pacific Coast, Inland Northwest, and Southern regions, the Northern EPD rounds out AWC’s commitment to regionally granular transparency. Previously, industry-wide EPDs covered all of North America as a single zone, but architects, builders, and specifiers increasingly sought data that reflect variations in forest management practices, regional mill technologies, and transportation patterns.
“Member feedback made it clear that project teams require localized environmental data to support green building certifications and corporate sustainability goals,” explained Rachael Jamison, AWC’s Vice President of Markets and Sustainability. “Our final regional EPD demonstrates the wood products sector’s dedication to open, verifiable reporting and underscores wood’s role as a low-carbon, renewable building material.”
To compile the four regional EPDs, AWC collaborated closely with the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (CORRIM) and the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement (NCASI). Data for each region were drawn from AWC’s annual Life Cycle Survey, which aggregates mill-level inputs—such as energy sources, log procurement mileage, and production efficiencies—into comprehensive life cycle assessments (LCAs). These LCAs serve as the technical foundation of the EPDs.
Each regional EPD underwent rigorous third-party verification by an accredited certifier under the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standards. This independent review process validates the methodologies, data quality, and transparency of assumptions—ensuring stakeholders can trust the EPD metrics when comparing materials or substantiating environmental product claims.
The Northern EPD, like its three predecessors, is published in accordance with ISO 14025 and EN 15804 standards. It quantifies key impact categories—global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication, smog formation, and resource depletion—over the full cradle-to-gate production chain. By isolating regional differences in logging practices, mill energy mixes, and transportation logistics, the Northern declaration provides more accurate inputs for building information modeling (BIM), Environmental Product Declarations databases, and green rating systems such as LEED and BREEAM.
AWC hosts all four regional EPDs, along with additional industry declarations for Softwood Plywood and Oriented Strand Board (OSB), on its online EPD library. Architects, engineers, developers, and product manufacturers can download the full reports, summary sheets, and ENVIRONMENTAL PRODUCT DECLARATION labels at no cost, supporting informed material selection and transparent supply chain reporting.
Representing 86 percent of the U.S. structural wood products industry and nearly 465,000 mill workers nationwide, AWC champions science-based data, technical education, and code development. The Council’s career-long mission is to promote the sustainable growth of wood product markets by demonstrating wood’s inherent carbon-sequestering advantages, recyclability, and energy-efficient life cycle.
Industry forecasts project that demand for low-carbon building materials will accelerate as net-zero and embodied-carbon targets become mainstream in both residential and commercial construction. The completion of the regional EPD suite positions U.S. softwood lumber producers to meet these evolving market requirements, enabling specifiers to quantify and compare environmental impacts at a regional granularity previously unavailable.
Sustainability leaders in the wood products sector are already leveraging AWC’s EPDs to enhance product transparency and support corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting. Mass timber manufacturers, custom millwork suppliers, and modular home builders can now integrate region-specific data into life cycle software tools, optimizing design decisions for both performance and environmental stewardship.
“The Northern EPD is more than a data document—it’s a strategic asset for the entire wood value chain,” noted Jamison. “By completing this regional data set, AWC confirms wood’s leadership in circular economy practices and our industry’s ongoing innovation in sustainable manufacturing.”
All four regional softwood lumber EPDs—and AWC’s broader EPD portfolio—are available for download at www.awc.org/epd.
Tags: American Wood Council, CORRIM, environmental product declaration, EPD, life cycle assessment, NCASI, softwood lumber, sustainability transparency, Wood Industry
